Professor Yin received his medical diploma (1982) and a Master's degree (1985) from Shanghai Medical University, Shanghai, China. He studied at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center for his PhD degree (1991). He completed his post-doctoral research training and residency in Clinical Pathology at Washington University School of Medicine. He is certified by ECFMG and is a Diplomat of the American Board of Pathology in Clinical Pathology. He was a faculty member and a medical staff at the Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (1998-2010), where he rose from Assistant, Associate to Full Professor, before he joined IUPUI in 2010 to be a Vice Chairman of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory, and the Director of the Clinical Laboratories of the Clarian Health System.

Professor Yin is an expert in the field of cell death and cell survival. His studies encompass both the basic biological mechanisms and the clinical aspects related to the reduction of tissue injury and the enhancement of cancer therapy. His accomplishments include the revelation of the role of Bcl-2 family proteins and the mitochondria in controlling crosstalk of different apoptosis signaling pathways. His current work on autophagy has implications to broad areas involving tissue injury, neurodegeneration, cancer biology, metabolic syndrome and aging.

Professor Yin received National Research Service Award (NIH, 1996), Howard Temin Award (NIH; 1998); Distinguished Overseas Young Scholar Award (China; 2003), and Distinguished Graduate Alumnus Lectureship (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 2010). He has served on the CSRS study section at NIH and is currently a member of several scientific journals, including Journal of Biological Chemistry, Hepatology and Autophagy. He has published nearly 100 research papers, review articles and book chapters. He is also the main co-editor of a widely-circulated text book Essentials of Apoptosis, which has published its second edition (2009).